Well, I’ve decided that the next step in my Ayurvedic journey is to give up processed white sugar. I can feel that it is no good for me. It makes me want more, it overrides my ability to say no and it makes me feel bad. It makes me feel bad physically and mentally. It really goes for my skin and gives me joint pain in my knees and hips. It reduces my energy and makes me feel flat. My body is saying S T O P.
From a Western perspective, I’m giving it up because:
it creates cravings because it makes us resistant to leptin, the hormone that tells us when to stop
it creates addictions because it releases dopamine which gives us a high, and then we develop a tolerance and then we have to eat more and more sugar to get the same feel good factor
it functions in a similar way to heroin and cocaine
it’s an attachment and it’s in my awareness and so I know I’ll feel better when I let go of it
it’s a socially accepted drug which makes it more of an insidious trickster and therefore I do not want to be in relationship with it
it has been used extensively in the food industry to get us hooked on processed products
it has no nutritional value
it is toxic to the liver and has harmful effects on our metabolism
it is a big contributing factor in diabetes, obesity, excess belly fat and heart disease
it has been linked to breast cancer, depression, liver disease, dementia and other types of cancer
some sugar gets its colour from a refining process using animal bone char. Although some sugar manufacturers are certified vegan, many are not.
it causes tooth decay
it lowers immunity
there are many ethical considerations about sugar such as very poor working conditions, poor rates of pay for workers in the sugarcane fields and it is well documented that child labour is widespread.
Some people say that when you embark on a journey of transformation, there will often be one habit that will be the key habit to change. That when you change that one habit, which will be different for everyone, everything else will fall into place. Like dominos, card houses or Jenga, changing that one habit will make the other unwanted habits topple over.
I feel like kicking the sugar may be that habit for me. Even as I write this, 4 days in to my new sugar-free life I’m thinking “but what about birthdays, Easter, Christmas and ice-cream on the beach”. I’m clinging to the stories about what sugar will do for family celebrations.
Sugar comes with so many stories and associations. It offers to make life so much sweeter, but actually it doesn’t. Not really.
From an Ayurvedic perspective, processed sugar is also not a good idea. In Ayurveda, refined or processed sugars are seen as over-stimulating food with the capacity to deaden the taste buds. Since the job of the taste buds is to help us choose our food wisely, if we deaden them through consuming large amounts of highly stimulating and flavoured things, we lose our ability to choose balance. We end up craving more and more of the things that are deadening our taste buds.
Sugar is also difficult to digest and therefore we store it as toxins or ama in the body. If you’ve ever woken up with a furry tongue after a sugar binge, this is ama. Ama in Ayurveda is considered to be the root cause of all disease.
Refined sugars are thought to aggravate all three doshas. It is said to have the potential to cause fluid retention, weight gain, mental anxiety and/or depression, exhaustion, a weakened pancreas or liver or cause inflammation in the joints.
I’ve been resisting committing to this change for a while, but I’m ready now. I think perhaps asking myself what I could do to find balance last week has helped me come to this decision.
Some people say that sugar should be regulated like alcohol and tobacco, or that sales of sugar products aimed at children should be banned, that advertising should be severely limited, full disclosure should be mandatory on products and that there should be a sugar tax.
Maybe so, but in the meantime, if you are used to consuming a lot of sugar, it’s useful to think about what else would bring you pleasure instead.
I think this week’s question has got to be: How else can I bring sweetness into my life?